I want to see a man jump on top of a bull moose’s back. HA!!! First of all he’s going to need a ladder to get up there. Secondly, this big dude isn’t going to take kindly to your advances. When it was mentioned that some guy jumped on a moose and rode it, it must have been a baby moose.
Here’s a suggestion for any of the “tame moose” thinkers out there. Go up to moose country during the rut and approach a full grown bull. Before you go, make sure you have your will filed at the court house.
Okay. So you’re saying that because you can wrestle a 6 month old calf to the ground, we should believe you can also ride his full-grown, uncastrated brother who weighs 5x as much to exhaustion, even though you’ve never tried, and rodeo bullriders are bucked off as often as not with the very substantial advantage of a rope. I see. Sorry I’ve been so skeptical. I’m convinced now.
Oh, and just for the information of readers, I would say that, having seen both cattle and bison move, that bison are substantially more nimble on their feet.
You people just don’t understand Blake. Let me see if I can help you understand him.
See, poor Blake just doesn’t understand the concept of odds. He thinks that if a Japanese guy manages to throw a brear one time, then anybody can repeatedly throw a bear to the ground until it dies.
Wouldn’t it be nice to live in Blake’s world? If you could win one hand of poker in the real world, then in Blake’s world you could win every hand of poker you ever played.
You only have to throw an animal once in the real world to be able to throw it repeatedly and without repercussion in Blake’s world.
Everyone in Blake’s world is a billionaire, because if you can earn one dollar in the real world, then in Blake’s world…
While Blake’s posts have been very informative regarding your probability of winning a fight in a different universe, I suspect that you would do significantly worse in THIS universe.
P.S. I love the discussion about how easy it would be to kill a blinded animal. I challenge Blake to get in a cage with ANY large angry mammal and try to blind it. I suspect he would be unable to tell us about his final epiphany.
Finally, a link for Blake; read it, you’ll live longer. Fighting wild animals
How about animals that, although they can’t kill you, you wouldn’t be able to kill them? I’m thinking giant clam here. Once he closes up there’s no way you can harm him bare-handed. I think we can discount stories of divers who have had their hands or feet trapped by the wiley clams. Doesn’t seem possible to me. So the clam shuts up and sits there. What will you do? What WILL you do?
For an armadillo, pangolin or turtle you could pick them up and smash them to the ground repeatedly. No problem there. How about a galapagos tortoise? Are they able to withdraw their heads completely? How tough would their exposed skin be? If you are allowed to use a sharp stick the tortoise is dead, but can you even break his skin with your bare hands and teeth?
So here’s a personal anecdote that may be of some relevance here. Riding my bike one day, I collided with a pedestrian. I’d say he weighed in at about 180lbs (a bit bigger than me) and I was traveling at 10-15 mph. The impact force left me, though conscious, pretty shaky.
If I were to face an animal that even approximated my weight (bones, muscle, and all) and could move at over, say, twenty mph, I’d be damn nervous. For even if I dodged a charge or two, one good contact and I’d be full on knocked out.
That said, I’d give myself odds on dogs, hogs, etc. But even then the outcome’s still very questionable. Let’s remember folks, I (or the OP) would be fighting for my life. The animal would be fighting for it’s life and a tasty snack.
Please get your poster’s names straight - I know almost everyone here disagrees with you on some point - but still… I didn’t claim we don’t have much muscle. You did not ask me for a reference. I’m not the only one who thinks humans are nothing special in the animal kingdom when it comes to strength… you seem to be the only one who does. I know how fast and strong a human is - I am one. I know I don’t use that speed or strength very much and that I would surprise myself if I really tried. But I also know that I have limits which fall far short of repeatedly judo-tossing a full-grown bear, dodging every hoof kick from a nearing moose, or pulling a musk-ox off it’s feet or holding on for 5 minutes until it gets tired with no riding instruction or experience.
Perhaps you missed my adressing of this. I did dispute it as a cold hard fact, which it isn’t. Yes there are indications based on measuring size dimensions of corpses. I’d still like to see actual measurments from living representatives before I believe it 100%. I’ve also questioned how much stronger/faster we are, and indicated my doubts as to how big an advantage this would be. Since you think a human’s best bet would be to pummel the ape boxer style (I think I might agree with that), then leg strength wouldn’t be a factor; the human would also be crouching down to punch an ape since they’re a lot shorter than a boxer would be used to (hence a change is stance). However I don’t need any more detailed references to the ape speed deal since a) they probably don’t exist, and b) I don’t think it’s much of a factor once we miss our first punch and he grabs our arm anyways.
Perhaps you are confusing me with another poster again because I never said we are less heavily muscled than other animals… and you also misunderstand my saying “not known for being much of anything physically”. That’s not referring to bell-curve averages for % body composition. It’s referring to physical (in this case fighting) abilities superior to other animals of similar size or even proportionaly.
Jaws and teeth? Not very robust at all… apes and pretty much any animal our size that would use them in a fight have us beat. Something like a crocodile is known for having a very dangerous bite, even though this can be countered.
Strength? We’re about average if in shape… though there is a huge range of strength depending on gender, size, genetics, training, and other factors. A gorilla is known for having a lot of strength (particularly upper body), so is a bear, but we are not.
Speed? Depends what kind… we don’t sprint very fast at all. All kinds of animals larger and smaller can outrun us. Quickness in movinging our hands around? Well perhaps… but it doesn’t help much if you don’t know what to do once you’re holding the animals. A cheetah is known for being fast.
Built-in weapons/toughness/agressivness? No physical weapons, other than our brains, definately less tough and aggressive than a whole slew of animals out there. A wild African boar is known for being very aggresive at times, very tough, and having very dangerous tusks. Getting my drift here? If you’re looking for an example from the animal kingdom of the best examples physical attributes, we won’t be mentioned.
Links to online Kung-foo magazines? Man…:rolleyes:
First you have to read further than the title of the webpage an article is on to know what it is and what is says. Then you have to actually read the words printed there. Neither of those pages are kung fu-oriented. One is Judo, the other is Brazillian jiu jitsu… completely different.
The first page is run by Neil Ohlenkamp (an “instructor, referee, master rank examiner, master coach and named United States Judo Coach of the Year for 1999”) and has won many awards for being one of the best on-line sources for judo info out there. The second is an article by Roy Harris, a Blackblet instructor and writer who is closely associated with the Gracie family (you do know who they are and what they do for a living right?). Both these guys know what they’re talking about. And actually, having a famous name/reputation doesn’t even matter for my purposes here. They both state very simple facts which I linked to to back up this quote of mine:
you need to know how to do a particular technique if you want to be reliable at it especially on other species
Anyone could say it, but Roy mentions Finally, you must have a firm understanding of the principles involved with joint manipulations and chokes. When you apply a joint manipulation or choke, you are applying a certain amount of pressure on a specific location, at a specific angle. If you change the angle of pressure, you make the lock ineffective. If you change the position of leverage, you make the lock ineffective. The same applies with chokes."
The other site also goes on about how technique is important. These guys are talking about attacking humans, who’s reactions and weaknesses have been studied for thousands of years. And they contend you still have to know what you’re doing to succesfully/reliably get the results you want. Now you think an untrained man is going to take these general principals of chokes (or no knowledge at all) to a cammel and bet his life that they’ll work no different? The only evidence you’ve provided that the averege man will choke out a large herbivor is a few stories you’ve heard where “people described Indians taking horses barehanded by suffocating them”… most likely from several hundred years ago no doubt. With that as your only backing, I wouldn’t be poking fun at the webpage title of someone else’s references both when that title is irrelevent and when they have a point you can’t counter.
I did not state that. This is the first time in this entire thread I’ve written the word “hedgehog” - I’ve been talking about porcupines. I also did not say damage would be done by simply picking the animal up. I said it would be done by thrusting my hand into it’s fur to get a good enough hold to do whatever… I did not say it was a fact that a human hand would be rendered physically useless; I said my hand would be in so much pain that I’d switch tactics to keep from using that hand, which would essentialy make that hand useless compared to my other limbs that I’d be using. You’ve asked me to support this and I’ve done that three times now - to recap:
In order to get a good enough hold on an animal that won’t be cooperating with you picking it up you’ll have to get a good firm fast grip which would most likely result in getting a few quills in your hand.
These quills hurt, and would hurt even more by my bending, twisting, and working them further into my hand by continuing to use it
Having nowhere’s near the neccesary motivation from a slow, furry pincushion (who’s attack would probably be limited to grabbing my foot and gnawing) to cause me to genuinely fear for my life and put me into a high-adrenilen and altered mental state the pain recepetion would most likely remain with me and motivate me not to use that hand again. I’d choose a less painful attack method.
I can understand you wanting to consider my position “debunked” and to make it disappear, but that won’t happen… especially by fabricating at least 7 bold faced lies about what I said and hoping nobody will notice. Deal.
Now I’m not saying we’re total sissies, in fact I believe that with enough study and time there are many seemingly invincible animals we could learn how to take out bare-handed. Watch the crocodile hunter to see what I mean. I’ve seen Steve take down full grown camels, out maneuver poisonous snakes, dive into the water and wrestle a 7-foot croc (that one was particularly impressive), and wrestle ferral pigs succesfully. I see cowboys take down steers, break horses, and some even dominate young elephants. The thing is that ALL these people have made a living of it, and usually a meager one at that. It ain’t the money that motivates them, it’s just what they do. MOST of them use at least minimal equipment (from boots to chains and jeeps), and seldom try to kill the animal - just subdue it. I don’t think the croc hunter could kill those pigs he pins down very easily without a knife to slit it’s thoat with.
Most of these endevors take years of highley specialized practice and don’t translate that well between species. A seasoned cowboy doesn’t know how to wrestle a crocodile or trap a cougar’s paws to prevent being ripped open, and a dog handler doesn’t easily switch to tackling elk. A person can learn these things, but we don’t have the moves in us by instinct the same way a big cat will automatically go for a windpipe bite/choke on whatever it’s trying to kill. Similarly some animals can seem to learn how to deal with us… there was one rodeo bull that was retired a few years ago because of this. Ahh, his name was Bodacious, and I found a page about him. .
Whatever our capacity to study and learn over time, the OP stated this fight was to be between the animal and the average person… meaning you right now sitting there are abuducted, stripped naked, and beamed into a fenced deathmatch arena where a mystery animal will be trying to kill you within 10 seconds. Which animals do you think you could beat knowing what you do right now?
See what Very bad Man doesn’t understand is that you need to read the OP. It asks for animals Dignan could kill. No mention of any probabilities. Just could. Obviously Dignan could only kill another human male 50% of the time. Does that mean we can say that he can’t kill a human? Of course not, it’s utter rubbish.
To use Very bad Man’s poker analogy, it is akin to saying that you can’t beat an opponent who is holding four aces. Of course you can. Not all the time, in fact most of the time you will lose. But you can beat four aces and you can beat a leopard. People have done both. Saying otherwise is simply wilful ignorance. Dignan could kill a leopard. He never asked if he would, he aske dif he could. And sure he could.
But poor Very Bad Man is new here, so we can forgive him for not reading the OP.
Yes of course. Someone said that. :rolleyes:
Did you even bother to read the thread before posting? I suspect not because that particular discussion centred on an admission by the detractors that the animal could be blinded. And no one said it was easy to kill a blinded animal. No one, ever. I don’t know how you got that. What I did say is that an blinded animal will die before an intact human, and in the meantime will be unable to attck the human.
Mmmiiikkkeee, that’s an excessively long post, but I see no actual substance, just a lot of baseless assertion and gainsaying. While I provide evidence of animals that people have defeated bare handed and the relative muscularisation, speed and strength of animals you seem to be simply saying that you don’t believe it. That’s all well and good. Ignorance can only be eliminated for the willing. However this being GQ unless you can provide some support for your doubts then we can say that humans are not weak, they are not slow and they can and have beat large herbivores bare handed.
Everything else in your last post seems to be just speculation with no substance, and so it will have to stand on your credibility and past history in supporting what you say.
You mean like the bit in the OP where the poster asks “What animals should I run from?” Did you miss that? I think you did. You don’t think you should run from an animal that has a 99.9999% chance of killing you? Or maybe you just didn’t read the OP.
Throwing a bear on the ground ONCE is like beating four aces. Think you can do it again? 'Cause that bear is going to draw 4 aces for every hand.
Yes, someone did, and that someone was you.
You can consider me a detractor, and I admit no such thing. You think you can just jump on the back of a large angry mammal, ride it around biting it until it gets tired, and then put it’s eyes out? Because that’s what you said in an earlier post. Of course you seem to have elided the problem of getting on top of the animal in the first place.
So what did I say in my last post that’s unacceptably speculative, unsubstantiated, or wrong?
I said:
1 - That you’ve confused my posts with someone else’s because I never said human’s didn’t have much muscle, were weak, slow, or below average animal strength.
2 - That we are about average in strength, can’t out-sprint a lot of animals, and don’t have any physical weaponry to give us an advantage. (Do you actually require cites to support this “wild speculation” that the average man can’t out-sprint a deer, bear, wolf, horse, elk, cheetah, greyhound, wildabeast, antelope and so on?)
3 - That I’ll need more evidence from living primates before I completely believe we have a substantial advantage in strength or speed. Then I gave an example of how leg strength wouldn’t be an advantage anyways. Never said the researchers couldn’t be right.
4 - An untrained man won’t know how to choke out a camel, and that he’d need to use the proper technique to do so (with references to the importance of technique from before plus a quote).
5 - That I’d feel a lot of pain in my hand from having porcupine quills mashed around in it.
6 - That I wouldn’t be freaked out enough by a porcupine to have my brain cut off the pain sensation.
7 - That indeed humans can learn how to take out a lot of pretty tough animals, and gave examples of others who have.
8 - That the above takes a lot of practice, dedication, and skill that the average man doesn’t have by instinct.
Don’t like my excessive wordiness? Well it wouldn’t be like that if I weren’t repeatedly misquoted and had my words twisted, confused with other posters and mistakingly accused of stating things I did not, called upon for cites to support simple concepts that people already know, called upon to explain concepts and provide more cites for claims I never made, repeatedly accused of making stuff up with only vague indications of what, and required to repeat points and reasonings I’ve already provided numerous times. Strangely there has been only one poster doing this. In fact my writing this entire post is an example of what I’m talking about, and it’s getting tiresome. I’d rather add more original material than to repeat the old.
However I understand that providing detailed explanations of a few main points a person stands by (to avoid the above) can be misinterpreted as “fluff” when the reader doesn’t like those points, despite none of it being a personal attack or out of order.
So if there are no specific requests for additional backing for what I’ve written, I will go watch the movie I rented now. I won’t badger anyone else to repeat themselves, as I’ve seen enough evidence (or lack there of) as it is. I’ll check back later, but to reduce clutter I will no longer repeat myself or my reasoning since it doesn’t seem to make any difference.
In an attempt to actually learn something here, I have a question about strategy.
When reading the earlier parts of the thread, it occured to me that blinding an animal might not just be a good “defensive” idea (I remember reading years ago that the average scent only travels about a foot per second in still air - no cite), but also perhaps actually a way to kill an animal.
So, grant me - for a moment - the ability to hang onto an animal without it doing permanent damage to me. Grant me also the ability to jam a finger into an eye of the animal, and pop it.
Would continually digging around in the eye socket with a finger (including fingernail) prevent blood clots from forming? If so, how long would I need to keep doing so in order to make, for example, a cow to bleed to death?
Basically, what I’m asking here is if the blood loss rate from gouging out an eyeball would exceed an animal’s rate of blood replacement. Every animal I can think of which has blood or something like it can also make more of it, but how quickly?
Given how easily human noses seem to bleed, would an animal’s nasal passages be a better target than an eye, for the same method (if, that is, a person can prevent clotting through repeated trauma)?
And: can a such relatively small wounds cause a loss of blood to such an extent that an animal would be rendered “harmless” within, oh, an hour? I mean, after a certain point, blood loss will be great enough that while an animal isn’t dead (and might recover if left alone), it is so incapacitated that fangs, claws, horns, mass, etc. won’t make it a threat. It’ll just lay there, and “allow” a person to do further injury, sealing the animal’s fate.
Since I’m already assuming a super-human ability to grab onto a random animal without grevious bodily harm, poke an eye out, and continue to poke, perhaps readers of this question will assume that an hour is “reasonable” for purposes of discussion.
I didn’t mention the rodeo rider climbing onto the moose as an argument that a typical human can beat a moose: Obviously a rodeo champ is atypical, in exactly the ways which would be of advantage here. I was just arguing that it’s not completely impossible for a human to beat a moose.
If we’re talking a steel cage, though, then I’d certainly back the human against almost anything (except for other apes and large snakes, perhaps). Whatever else you may say about our physical abilities, humans (like all apes) are excellent climbers. Make it to the top of the cage and just hang there, and it’s an endurance contest. If you can manage to keep the animal infuriated, so much the better. Verbal and gesture taunts are easy, and if those don’t work, you might try pissing on the beast (aim for the eyes for extra annoyance).
Note also that we’re not asking for the human to have decent odds. Fifty-fifty is not decent odds. Heck, I wouldn’t consider 99% chance of victory to be decent, if my life is on the line. I’d run from almost anything, given the choice, but here I’m not given the choice.
By the way, Lemur866, do giant clams anchor themselves to the bottom? Because if not, I would think that you could haul one to the surface and “drown” it in air. Depending on how far from the surface it is, and how long you can hold your breath.
Giant clams vary considerably in size as they grow. The ones I saw in Thailand were less than a foot across, though these were young. They are sessile, but I don’t think they send out byssal threads. Adults can get pretty big though, up to 200kg. Don’t know how hard it would be to get up to the surface and into the air, although one of the common injuries attributed to them are from hernias from doing just this. They are usually found within 20m of the surface since they need light. However they don’t appear to be able to close the shell completely or even all that fast, so they probably wouldn’t pose much of a threat if any.
Blood loss from eyes or the nose… I’m not sure. Human noses can be broken and bleed pretty easy, but to do that kind of damage to
this nose would be a little harder. I think repeated finger jams into gouged eye sockets could work after a while. Wait until he gets tired and lays down, jab, then run away and wait for the next chance. Might take hours to days, but you’ll probably come out on top eventually.
mmmiiikkkeee wrote:
Actually, I was thinking about jamming a finger into such a nose to tear at the tender membranes inside using the fingernails, causing a bleed. I ruled out the breaking of noses (or any other bones) of large mammals early on, as it’d require more strength and skill than I’d give most people credit for. With smaller animals, of course, the most effective method is probably going to be along the lines of “crush them.” A full-body-weight, both-feet stomp on the wily porcupine could (perhaps) do it fatal damage in a single attack, even though its opponent would be in no condition to walk away from the fight.
(Note that this crushing attack would be almost a no-brainer against the New World Porcupines, which average an adult male weight of 11 pounds or so. I’d give it a lot of thought before trying to jump on one of the larger Old World Porcupines, however, since some of them top out at 66 pounds.)
So long as the danged thing doesn’t tusk an artery of mine first.
Secondly, which would work better: well-trimmed fingernails filed down to as close to a knife-edge as possible, or ragged, chewed-up fingernails with pointy bits sticking out in many directions? In other words, if the goal is to create bleeding in thin tissues, which would be more appropriate: a freshly-honed straight razor, or an old, chipped, rusty, serrated steak knife?
My uncle, a man in his forties, in good shape, fought and kill a doberman bare handed. He sacrificed his left arm and punch the dog in the head a dozen time or so, without any effect. The dog just kept bitting harder. My uncle then proceeded to punch the animal’s chest, killing it with only a few blows. He then did the same thing to the other dag that was attacking my aunt.
They both needed alot of stiches and some minor surgery (ligaments were damaged), but survived, unprepared to a dog attack.
My uncle is bigger, taller, and in better shape than hte average person (he’s a gym teacher). I don’t know about the OP, but I wouldn’t try it!
Just a little addition to the muscle proportion argument that seems to be going on: Although I’m sure that nobody is making such a simple argument, it’s worth pointing out that muscle percentage is not all that matters. The efficiency of muscle and skeletal structure can be more important than muscle percentages.
As noted in: this Cecil column,
Also, someone mentioned christians being fed to lions earlier in this thread. Unfortunately it’s not really a fair comparison. Because lions and other exotic beasts were very valuable beasts, the christians (or other criminals) weren’t generally thrown into the ring in top fighting condition: often arms and fingers were broken first, teeth knocked out and/or fingernails pulled. Trying to find a cite online for that but know it is in my books at home.
Finally, like several others on this board, I have worked on cattle farms as well as a few piggeries in the boarhouse (don’t ask me what the job description for an assistant boarman contains). I can assure you that, if you’re in an enclosed space with an angry beast that weighs several times your weight, particularly if it’s male, you’re best strategy is to get out of there REALLY F***ING FAST.
I’ve been thrown 20 feet through the air by the casual flick of a boar’s head when he was playing with me. I’ve seen a boar put a tusk straight through a man’s leg as easily as you or I would bite into an apple. I’ve been squashed into a fence hard enough to break one of my ribs by a bull who was just leaning against me because he was taking a rest.
Whenever a bull or a boar started looking even slightly upset, I assure you I got the hell out of there as fast as I could. So in answer to the OP question of "What animals should I run from? " my answer is: Anything that looks like it can hurt you but is either slower or less maneuverable than you.
On horses as an opponent:
It’s been argued that horses were jumped on bareback and throttled down by Native Americans. This would most likely be done on the plains, where a horse could employ its primary means of survival: running like hell. It would also buck to try to dislodge the predator on its back, and even assuming the Indian horse-catchers were young, strong, agile, and highly skilled, it’s not unreasonable to believe that they didn’t always succeed in staying on until the horse was so exhausted they could throttle it. I’d also like to know if the horsecatchers had ropes with them to throw around the horse’s neck?
Now take Dignan’s OP: an average Joe/Jolene. Maybe s/he knows how to ride; maybe not. In any case, our unarmed Dignan and the horse are locked into a cage – big enough to maneuver, not big enough for flight to be an option. The horse isn’t merely interested in fleeing for its life – it wants to KILL Dignan.
Even assuming Dignan can get on the horse’s back, how long can s/he stay there? A frantic horse can throw some truly amazing moves when it’s bucking with murderous intent. And if bucking doesn’t dislodge the rider, there’s always rearing straight up and over backwards, or smashing the rider against the side of the cage.
This assumes, as I said, that Dignan was able to get onto the horse’s back to begin with. I can assure you, from personal experience, that a horse can move like lightning when it wants to. Even without steel horseshoes on they can kill you with one kick. They also have large teeth in powerful jaws and can chomp onto a human arm or shoulder, say, then pick up said human and shake him/her like a ragdoll, before dropping their victim under their pounding front hooves.
If I ever had to face a horse that wanted me dead, I’d pray for a tall, strong fence between us. And an AK-47.
This is great… so your strategy for defeating, say, an adult male Siberian tiger is to climb up the side of the cage and frustrate it to death by urinating on him. Almost as funny as the Giant Panda post on the first page!
